Wargaming for Learning: How Educational Gaming Supports Student Learning and Perspectives

Abstract

To what extent does educational gaming add value to more traditional instructional models in learning core concepts of national security and warfighting? This paper presents the results from a quasi-experimental, cross-sectional, and longitudinal study of students taking two standardized courses in the Joint Military Operations department at the US Naval War College. Split into wargaming and non-wargaming sections by instructor preference, subject learning is measured through self-reported and objective measures at three points: prior to the start of the content block on “Operational Art”; after the case study of the WW2 battle of Leyte Gulf but prior to any wargaming; and for subjects in wargaming course sections, after participating in the Leyte Gulf scenario of the “War at Sea” wargame. The results support the hypotheses that wargaming increases learning and alter student preferences in favor of learning through gaming but fail to find evidence that students recognize the value of the debriefing phase of educational gaming. This article adds to existing studies by focusing on an understudied practitioner population—graduate-level career military officers at a professional military education (PME) institution—and mitigating several of the methodological challenges facing many scholarly projects in the study of educational gaming in political science.

Keywords:

• Wargaming
• educational gaming
• learning
• joint professional military education
• simulations
• adult learning
• War at Sea

Acknowledgment

The opinions expressed in this proposal are solely those of the authors and do not represent those of the US Naval War College or Department of Defense.

Notes

1 See for example: Perla (1990), Cornell and Allen (2002), Smith (2009), Sabin (2012); Frank (2014) and Sabin (2015).

2 Guetzkow (2007)’s Inter-nation simulation was one of the first publications in this area; quickly followed by Cohen (1962), Robinson et al. (1966), Hermann and Hermann (1967), Louscher and Van Steenburg (1977) In recent years, blogs, websites, and edited volumes have started collecting some of these exercises for public use. See for example the Active Learning in Political Science blog; Kansas State’ University’s Gaming Political Science site; PaxSims; Lahneman and Arcos (2014); and Harvey, Fielder, and Gibb (2022).

3 Kammerer and Higashi (2021) found that most published games and simulations in Journal of Political Science Education are focused on topics in international relations and comparative politics; see Rosen (2022) for a summary of the current state of the literature in the field.

4 A Fall 2019 survey of students participating in a wargame at NWC captured their subjective reports on the value of the experience for learning. More than 95% of students agreed that the wargame had value, and that finding influenced the decision to increase wargaming in the department. However, that survey did not have any objective measures of learning, nor did it compare wargaming students to either themselves via pre-test or to non-wargaming students.

5 This study received IRB approval in 2021 from the Naval Postgraduate School, which coordinates review for the Naval War College. Study ID: IRB#2021.0002-IR-EM1-A.

6 While student assignment is random, there is an effort to ensure service diversity in the seminar makeup so that each seminar has representation from the navy, air force, army, marines, civilian agencies, and international navies.

7 See for example Peters and Vissers (2004) and Crookall (2010).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amanda M. Rosen

Amanda M. Rosen is Associate Professor and Interim Director of the Writing and Teaching Excellence Center at the US Naval War College. She holds a PhD and MA in political science from Ohio State University, and a BA in Political and Economic studies of Europe from Duke University. A co-founder of the award-winning Active Learning in Political Science blog and a member of the DEEP Faculty Development team, Dr. Rosen is the recipient of multiple teaching awards, including a Civilian Achievement Medal for her work in assisting the Naval War College in its transition to virtual instruction during Covid-19. She specializes in the scholarship of teaching and learning, particularly on the use of games and simulations, experiential learning, and teaching research methods. She is the author of the Great Course “Effective Research Methods for Any Project” and her book Teaching Political Science is under contract with Palgrave-Macmillan. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Political Science Education, PS: Political Science & Politics, International Studies Perspectives, Politics & Policy, and multiple edited volumes.

Lisa Kerr

Lisa Marie Kerr is an Associate Professor at the US Naval War College dedicated to facilitating learning opportunities through which leaders are challenged and supported to identify and actualize potential in themselves and others. She has expertise in curriculum development, learning assessment, and organization change and development. Current research projects focus on resilience among biomedical researchers, executive leader development and dispositions, and access and success among underrepresented and hidden populations in graduate education. Throughout her career Dr. Kerr has contributed to the development of academic programs and policies designed to facilitate environments that contribute to maximum learning and persistence toward credential completion. She has served in central administrative positions as well as Director for multiple graduate programs.